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^, THE CHARACTER 

AND INFLUENCE OF 

ABOLITIONISM! 



A. SERMO]Sr 

PREACHED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 

OF BROOKLYN, 

ON SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 9th, 1860, 



REV. HENRY J. VAN DYKE. 



j3:s TepoTted foT the "JSTeuj YotTc He-raid.' 



(SI 



SECOKTX) EiDia?io: 



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IbUd 




BALTIMORE 

PUBLISHED BY HENRY TAYLOR, 

SUN IRON BUILDING. 



FROM THE STEAM PRESS OF S. SANDS MILLS. 



1860. 




THE CHARACTER 

AND INFLUENCE OF 

ABOLITIONISM! 



A^ SEPlMOISr 

PREACHED IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 

OF BROOKLYN, 

ON SUNDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 9th, 1860, 

BY / 

REV. HENRY J. VAN DYKE. 



fis TepoTtedfo-r the ''JSTciaj Yot^H^ Re-rcild! 












BALTIMORE: :.^.— 

PUBLISHED BY HENRY TAYLOR, 

SUN IRON BUILDING. 



FROM THE STEAM PRESS OF S. SANDS MILLS. 



1860. 



FROM THK NKW YORK HKRALH. 



Thr First Presbyterian Church, corner of Remsen 
and (Clinton streets^ Brooklyn, was densely crowded on 
Sunday Evening, Deceniber 9th, with a highly intel- 
ligent congregation, who listened with marked interest 
and attention to a discourse Irom their pastor, Rev. Henry 
J Van Dyke, on the Character and Influence of Aboli- 
tionism, from a Scriptural point of view. In l'^^ open- 
ing supplication the Reverend gentleman prayed that 
Providence would bless our Southern brethren and re- 
strain the passion of the evil among them ; that the mas- 
ter micrht be made Christ's servant, and the servrint 
Christ's freeman, and so both sit together united in 
Christian love in that church founded by Christ and His 
Apostles in which there is neither Greek nor Jew male 
nor female, bond nor free, but all are one m Christ Je- 
sus He also prayed that God would bless the people of 
the' Nortbern States, restrain the violence of fanatical 
men provide for those who, by the agitation of the times 
have been tbrown out of employment, keep the speaker 
from teaching anything which was not in accordance 
with the Divine will, and disabuse the minds of his hear- 
ers of all prejudice and passion, so that they might be 
willing to be convinced of the truth. ^ . , ^ ^. 

His text was chosen from Paul's First Epistle to Tim- 
othy, sixth chapter, from the first to the fifth verse, in- 
elusive. 



^: SERMON. 

^ ■ 

1. Let as many servants as are under the joke count their own masters 
worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. 

2. And they that have believing masters let them not despise them, because 
they are brethren ; but rather do them service, because they are faithful, and be- 
loved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. 

3. If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even 
the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to god- 
liness, 

4. He is proud, knowing nothing but doting about questions and strifes of 
words whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, 

5. Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth 
supposing that gain is godliness ; from such withdraw thyself. 

Paul's First Epistle to Timothy — 6/A cliap., \st to 5th verse. 



I propose to discuss the character and influence of abolitionism. 
With this view I have selected a text from the Bible, and purpose to ad- 
here to the letter and spirit of its teaching. We acknowledge in this 
place but one standard of morals, but one authoritative and infallible rule 
of faith and practice. For we are Christians here ; not Papists to bow 
down to the dictation of any man or church ; not heathen philosophers, to 
grope our way by the feeble glimmerings of the light of nature; not 
modern infidels, to appeal from the written law of God to the corrupt and 
fickle tribunal of reason and humanity ; but Christians, on whose banner 
is inscribed this sublime challenge — ' ' To the law and to the testimony — 
if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in 
them." 

Let me direct your special attention to the language of our text. There 
is no dispute among commentators, there is no room for dispute as to the 
meaning of the expression " servants under the yoke." Even Mr. Barnes, 



who is himself a distinguished abolitionist, and has done more perhaps, 
than any other man in this country to propagate abolition doctrines, ad- 
mits that " the addition of the phrase ' under the yoke' shows undoubt- 
edly that it (i. e. the original word doulos') is to be understood here of 
slavery." Let me quote another testimony on this point from an eminent 
Scotch divine — I mean Dr. McKuight, whose Exposition of the Epistles is a 
standard work in Great Britain and in this country, and whose associations 
must exempt him from all suspicion of pro-slavery prejudices. He intro- 
duces his exposition of this chapter with the following explanation : — 
" Because the law of Moses allowed no Israelite to be made a slave for 
life without his own consent, the Judaizing teachers, to allure slaves to 
their party, taught that under the gospel, likewise, involuntary slavery is 
unlawful. This doctrine the Apostle condemned here, as in his other epis- 
tles, by enjoining Christian slaves to honor and obey their master, whether 
they were believers or unbelievers, and by assuring Timothy, that if any 
person taught otherwise, he opposed the wholesome precepts of Jesus 
Christ, and the doctrine of the gospel, which in all points is conformable 
to godliness or sound morality, and was puffed up with pride without pos- 
sessing any true knowledge either of the Jewish or Christian revelation." 
Our learned Scotch friend then goes on to expound the passage in the fol- 
lowing paraphrase, which we commend to the prayerful attention of all 
whom it may concern : 

' ' Let whatever Christian slaves are under the yoke of unbelievers pay 
their own masters all respect and obedience, that the character of God 
whom we worship may not be calumniated, and the doctrine of the gospel 
may not be evil spoken of as tending to destroy the political rights of man- 
kind. And those Christian slaves who have believing masters, let them 
not despise them, fancying that they are their equals because they are 
their brethren in Christ ; for, though all Christians are equal as to religi- 
ous privileges, slaves are inferior to their masters in station. Wherefore, 
let them serve their masters more diligently, because they who enjoy the 
benefit of their service are believers and beloved of God. " These things 
teach, and exhort the brethren to practice them." If any one teach differ- 
ently by affirming that under the gospel slaves are not bound to serve their 
masters, but ought to be made free, and does not consent to the whole- 
some commandments which are our Lord Jesus Christ's, and to the doctrine 
of the gospel, which in all points is conformable to true morality, he is puff- 
ed up with pride and knoweth nothing either of the Jewish or the Christian 



revelations, tliougli he pretends to have great knowledge of both. But is 
distempered in his mind about idle questions and debate of words which 
afford no foundation for such a doctrine, but are the source of envy, conten- 
tion, evil speaking, unjust suspicion that the truth is not sincerely main- 
tained, keen disputings carried on contrary to conscience by men wholly 
corrupted in their minds and destitute of the true doctrine of the gospel, 
who reckon whatever produces most money is the best religion ; from all 
such impious teachers withdraw thyself, and do not dispute with them." 

The text, as thus expounded by an American abolitionist and a Scotch 
divine, (whose testimony need not be confirmed by quotations from all the 
other commentators), is a prophecy written for these days, and wonderful- 
ly applicable to our present circumstances. It gives us a life-like picture 
of abolitionism in its principles, its spirit and its practice, and furnishes 
us with plain instruction in regard to our duty in the premises. Before 
entering upon the discussion of the doctrine, let us define the terms em- 
ployed. By abolitionism we mean the principles and measures of aboli- 
tionists. And what is an abolitionist ? He is one who believes that slave- 
holding is sin, and ought therefore to be abolished. This is the funda- 
mental, the characteristic, the essential principle of abolitionism — that 
slaveholding is sin — that holding men in involuntary ser^'itude is an in- 
fringement upon the rights of man, a heinous crime in the sight of Grod. 
A man may believe on political or commercial grounds that slavery is an 
undesirable system, and that slave labor is not the most profitable ; he may 
have various views as to the rights of slaveholders under the constitution 
of the country ; he may think thi:^ or that law upon the statute books of 
Southern States is wrong ; but this does not constitute him an abolitionist, 
unless he believes that slave holding is morally wrong. The alleged sin- 
fullness of slaveholding, as it is the characteristic doctrine, so it is the 
strength of abolitionism in all its ramified and various forms. It is by 
this doctrine that it lays hold upon the hearts and consciences of men, that 
it comes as a disturbing force into our ecclesiastical and civil institutions, 
and by exciting religious animosity (which all history proves to be the 
strongest of human passions), imparts a peculiar intensity to every con- 
test into which it enters. And you will perceive it is just here that aboli- 
tionism presents a proper subject for discussion in the pulpit — for it is one 
great purpose of the Bible, and therefore one great duty of Grod's minis- 
ters in its exposition, to show what is sin and wjiat is not. Those who 
hold the doctrine that slaveholding is sin, and ought therefore to be 





abolished, differ very much in the extent to which they reduce their theory 
to practice. In some this faith is almost without works They content 
themselves with only voting in such a way as in their judgment will best 
promote the ultimate triumph of their views. Others stand off at what 
they suppose a safe distance, as Shim6i did when he stood on an opposite 
hill to curse King David, and rebuke the sin and denounce divine judg- 
ments upon the sinner. Others more practical, if not more prudent, go 
into the very midst of the alleged wickedness and teach ' ' servants un- 
der the yoke" that they ought not to count their own masters worthy of all 
honor — that liberty is their inalienable right — which they should main- 
tain, if necessary, even by the shedding of blood. Now, it is not for me 
to decide who of all these are the truest to their own principles. It is not 
for me to decide whether the man who preaches this doctrine in brave 
words, amid applauding multitudes in the city of Brooklyn, or the one 
who in the stillness of the night and in the face of the law's terrors goes 
to practice the preaching at Harper's Ferry, is the most consistent aboli- 
tionist and the most heroic man. It is not for me to decide which is the 
most important part of a tree ; and if the tree be poisonous, which is the 
most injurious, the root, or the branches, or the fruit? But I am here to- 
night, in God's name, and by His help, to show that this tree of abolition- 
ism is evil and only evil, root and branch, flower and leaf and fruit; 
that it springs from and is nourished by an utter rejection of the Scrip- 
tures ; that it produces no real benefit to the enslaved, and is the fruitful 
source of division and strife and infidelty in both church and State. I 
have four distinct propositions on the subject to maintain — four theses to 
nail up and defend : 

I. Abolitionism has no foundation in the Scriptures. 

II. Its principles have been promulgated chiefly by misrepresentation 
and abuse. 

III. It leads, in multitudes of cases, and by a logical process, to utter 
infidelity. 

IV. It is the chief cause of the strife that agitatos and the danger 
that threatens our country. 

I. AHOLITIONISM HAS NO VOUNDATION IN SCRIPTURE. 

Passing by the records of the patriarchal age, and waving the question 
as to those servants in Abraham's family, who, in the simple, but expres- 



sive language of Scripture, " were bought with his money," let us come 
at once to the tribunal of that law which Grod promulgated amid the so- 
lemnities of Sinai. What said the law and the testimony to that peculiar 
people over whom God ruled, and for whose institutions he has assumed 
the resposibility ? The answer is in the 25th chaptc^r of Leviticus, in 
these words : 

" And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor and be sold 
unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond servant; but as 
a hired servant and a sojourner he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee 
unto the year of jubilee, and then shall he depart from thee, both he 
and his children with him." 

So far, you will observe, the law refers to the children of Israel, who, 
by rcivson of poverty, were reduced to servitude. It was their right to be 
free at the year of jubilee, unless they chose to remain in perpetual bond- 
age, for which case provision is made in other and distinct enactments. 
But not so with slaves of foreign birth. There was no year of jubilee 
provided for them. For what says the law? Read the 44-46 verses of 
the same chapter. 

" Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have shall be 
of the heathen that are round about you. Of them shall ye buy bondmen 
and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do so- 
journ among you — of them shall ye buy and of their ftimilies that are with 
you, which they beget in your land ; and they shall be your possession. 
And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to 
inherit them as a possession ; they shall be your bondmen forever," 

There it is, plaiuly written in the divine law. No legislative enact- 
ment ; no statute framed by legal skill was ever more explicit and inca- 
pable of perversion. When the abolitionist tells me that slaveholding is 
sin, in the simplicity of my faith in the Holy Scriptures, I point him to 
this sacred record, and tell him in all candor, as my text does, that his 
teaching blasphemes the name of God and His doctrine. When he begins 
to doat about questions and strifes of words, appealing to tlie Declaration 
of Independence, and asserting that the idea of property in man is an 
enormity and a crime, I still hold him to the record, saying, " Ye shall 
take him as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for 
a possession." When he waxes warm — as he always does if his opponent 
quote Scripture (which is the great test to try the spirits whether they be 
of (xod — the very spear of Ithuriel to reveal their true character) — -when 



he gets angry, and begins to pour out his evil surmisings and abuse upon 
slaveholders — ^I obey the precept which says, ' ' from such withdraw thy- 
self," comforting myself with this thought : that the wisdom of God is 
wiser than men, and the kindness of Grod kinder than men. Philosophers 
may reason and reformers may rave till doomsday, they never can con- 
vince me that God, in theLevitical law, or in any other law, sanctioned sin ; 
and as I know, from the plain passage I have quoted, and many more 
like it, that He did sanction slaveholding among his ancient people, I 
know, also, by the logic of that faith which believes the Bible to be His 
word, that slaveholding is not sin. There are men even among profess- 
ing Christians, and not a few ministers of the Gospel, who answer this ar- 
gument from the Old Testament Scriptures by a simple denial of their au- 
thority. They do not tell us how God could ever or anywhere couute- 
nance that which is morally wrong, but they content themselves with 
saying that the Levitical law is no rule of action for us, and they appeal 
from its decisions to what they consider the higher tribunal of the Gospel. 
Let us, therefore, join issue with them before the bar of the New Testa- 
ment Scriptures. It is a historic truth, acknowledged on all hands, that 
at the advent of Jesus Christ slavery existed all over the civilized world, 
and was intimately interwoven with its social and civil institutions. In 
Judea, in Asia Minor, in Greece, in all the countries where the Saviour 
or his Apostles preached the Gospel, slaveholding was just as common as 
it is to-day in South Carolina. It is not alleged by any one, or at least 
by any one having any pretensions to scholarship or candor, that the 
Roman laws regulating slavery were even as mild as the very worst sta- 
tutes which have been passed upon the subject in modern times. It will 
not be denied by any honest and well informed man that modern civiliza- 
tion and the restraining influences of the Gospel have shed ameliorating 
influences upon the relation between master and slave, which was utterly 
unknown at the advent of Christianity. And how did Jesus and his 
Apostles treat this subject ? Masters and slaves met them at every step 
in their missionary work, and were even present in every audience to 
which they preached. The Roman law which gave the Jfull power of life 
and death into the master's hand, was familiar to them, and all the evils 
connected with the system surrounded them every day as obviously as the 
light of heaven ; and yet it is a remarkable fact, which the abolitionist 
does not because he cannot deny, that the New Testament is utterly silent 
in re<^ard to the alleged sinfulness of slaveholding. In uU the instrnctions 



of the Saviour — in all tho reported sermons of the inspu-ed Apostles — in 
all the epistles they were moved by the Holy Spirit to write for the in- 
struction of coming generations— there is not one distinct and explicit de- 
nunciation of slaveholding, nor one precept requiring the master to eman- 
cipate his slaves. Every acknowledged sin is openly and repeatedly con- 
demned, and in unmeasured terms. Drunkenness and adultery, theft and 
murder — all the moral wrong which ever have been known to afflict so- 
ciety, are forbidden by name ; and yet, according to the teaching of abo- 
litionism, the greatest of all sins — this sum of all villanies — is never spo- 
ken of except in respectful terms. How can this be accounted for ? 

Let Dr. Wayland, whose work on moral science is taught in many of 
our schools, answer this question, and let parents whose children are 
studying that book dilligently consider his answer. I quote from Way- 
land's Moral Science, page 213 : — 

"The Gospel was designed not for one race or tor one time, but for all 
races and for all times. It looked not to the abolition of slavery for that 
age alone, but for its universal aboUtion. li nee the important object of 
its author was to gain for it a lodgment in every part of the known world, 
so that by its universal diffusion among all classes of society it might quiet- 
ly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil passion of men. In this 
manner alone could its object — a universal moral revolution — have been 
accomplished, For if it had forbidden the evil, instead of subverting the 
principle ; if it had proclaimed the u)ilawfulness of slavery and taught 
slaves to resist the oppression of their masters, it would instantly have ar- 
rayed the two parties in deadly hostility throughout the civilized world ; 
its announcement would have been the signal of servile war and the very 
name of the Christian religion would have been forgotten amidst the agi- 
tation of universal bloodshed." 

We pause not nuw to comment upon the admitted fact that Jesus Christ 
and his Apostles pursued a course entirely different from that adopted by 
the abolitionists, including the learned author himself; nor to inquire 
whether the teaching of abolitionism is not as likely to produce strife and 
bloodshed in these days as in the first ages of the church. What we now 
call attention to and protest against is the imputation here cast upon Christ 
and his Apostles. Do you believe the Saviour sought to insinuate his re- 
ligion into the earth by concealing its real design, and preserving a pro- 
found silence in regard to one of the very worst sins it came to destroy ? 
Do you believe that when he healed the centurion's servant, (whom every 



10 

honest commentator admits to have been a slave), and pronounced that 
precious euh>gy upon the master, "I have not seen so great faith in Is- 
rael"- — do you believe that Jesus suffered that man to live on in sin be- 
cause he deprecated the consequences of preaching abolitionism ? When 
Paul stood upon Mars' hill, surrounded by ten thousand times as many 
slaveholders as there were idols in the city, do you believe he kept hack 
any part of the requirements of the Grospel because he was afraid of a tu- 
mult among the people ? We ask these abolition philosopht^rs whether, 
as a matter of fact, idolatry and the vices connected with it were not 
even more intimately interwoven with the social and civil life of the 
Roman empire than slavery was ? Did the Apostles abstain from 
preaching against idolatry ? Nay, who does not know that by denouncing 
this sin they brought down upon themselves the whole power of the Roman 
empire ? Nero covered the bodies of the Christian martyrs with pitch 
and lighted up the city with their burning bodies, just because they would 
not withhold or compromise the truth in regard to the worship of idols. 
In the light of that fierce persecution it is a profane trifling for Dr. Way- 
land or any other man to tell us that Jesus or Paul held back their honest 
opinions of slavery for fear of " a servile war, in which the very name of 
the Christian religion would have been forgotten." The name of the 
Christian religion is not so easily forgotten ; nor are God's great purposes 
of redemption capable of being defeated by an honest declaration of His 
truth everywhere aiid at all times. And yet this philosophy, so dishonor- 
ing to Christ and his Apostles, is moulding the character of our young 
men and women. It comes into our schools and mingles with the very 
life-blood of future generations the sentiment that Christ and his Apostles 
held back the truth, and suffered sin to go unrebuked for fear of the wrath 
of man. And all this to maintain, at all hazards, and in the face of the 
Saviour's example to the contrary, the unscriptural dogma that slavohold- 
ing is sin. But it must be observed in this connection that the Apostles 
went much further than to abstain from preaching against slaveholding. 
They admitt(Hl slaveholders to the communion of the church. In our 
text, masters are acknowledged as "brethren, faithful and beloved, par- 
takers of the benefit." If the New Testament is to be received as a faith- 
ful history, no man was ever rcvjected by the apostolic church upon the 
ground that he owned slaves. If he abiised his power as a master, if he 
availed himself of the authority eonfen-ed by the Roman law to commit 
adultery, or murder, or cruelty, he was reject<^d for these crimes, just as 



11 

he would be rejected now for similar crimes from any Christian church in 
our Southern States. If parents abused or neglected their children they 
were censured, not for having children, but for not treating them proper- 
ly. And so with the slaveholder. It was not the owning of slaves, but 
the manner in which he fulfilled the duties of his station that made him a 
subject for church discipline. The mere fact that he was a slaveholder no 
more subjected him to censure than the mere fact that he was a father or 
a husband. It is upon the recognized lawfulness of the relation that all 
the precepts regulating the reciprocal duties of that relation are based. 

These precepts are scattered all through the inspired epistles. There 
is not one command or exhortation to emancipate the slave. The Apostle 
well knew that for the present emancipation would be no real blessing to 
him. But the master is exhorted to be kind and considerate, and the 
slave to be obedient, that so they might preserve the unity of that church 
in which there is no distinction between Greek or Jew, male or female,, 
bond or free. Oh, if ministers of the Gospel in this land or age had but 
followed Paul as he followed Christ, and, instead of hurling anathemas 
and exciting wrath against slaveholders, had sought only to bring both 
master and slave to the fountain of Emanuel's blood ; if tho agencies of 
the blessed Gospel had only been suftered to work their way tjuietly, as 
the light and dew of the morning, into the structure of society, both 
North and South, how different would have been the position of our coun- 
try this day before God ! How different would have been the privileges 
enjoyed by the poor black man's soul, which, in this bitter contest, has 
been too much neglected and despised. Then there would have been no 
need to have converted our churches into military barracks for collecting 
firearms to carry on war upon a distant frontier. No need for a sovereign 
State to execute the fearful penalty of the law upon the invader for doing 
no more than honestly to carry out the teaching of abolition preachers, 
who bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's 
shoulders, while they touch them not with one of their fingers. No need 
for the widow and the orphan to weep in anguish of heart over those cold 
graves, for whose dishonor and desolation God will hold the real authors 
responsible. No occasion or pretext for slaveholding States to pass such 
stringent laws for the punishment of the secret incendiary and the pre- 
vention of servile war. ' 

I shall not attempt to show what will be the condition of the African 
race in this country when the Gospel shall have brought all classes under 



12 



to compl* dominion. What civil and social relation. »- j;^'™;'"™ 
in the times of miUenial glory, I do not know. I cor raU, -^ - *« 
cnrrent opinion of our chnrch that slavery is permitted and '^''l-''"^^ "J 
ZtZ law under hoth the Jewish and Christian ^'^P-"^^^^^ 
the final destiny of the enslaved, but as an important and necessary pro 
tss t tlS transition from heathenism to Christianity-a wheel tn the 
Tea maeh nery of Providence, hy which the «nal redempfon ts to he a.- 
S:;- hed. H^owever this may he, one thin. I --^Z ^ 

t::i and the free, Ld where slaves are better fed ^^^-^;:, 
..ucted, and have a better ^^^^^^^^ t^of llitL- 

l-rS^^t;; r;e\l'::eJ; "ears past, .^.^.^ of such 
Tmi" 2u Z tenfold as great. Fanatic.m at the North . one c 

».umbling block in the way of the <^^;P; ^ f^^^ ,hriS brlrel at 
grievance that presses to-day upon tie hearts ot om l.n 

L south. This, in a mcasu. -PUms why su.r^.^^^as^r^i^^ 
::ra :!":::. "/:-"!„ any sta. or stati„^i.. 

rdZSed; ;%be constant ^.-ions of ab.ti»^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

tional councils, and the incessant turmoil excited by the p 

dogma, that slaveholding is sin. 

o nv AROTTTTONISM HAVE BEEN PROPAGATED CHIEFLY 
II. THE PRINCIPLES Or ABOLITIONlMa 

BY MISREPRESENTATION AND ABUSE. 

Having no foundation in Scripture, it does not carry »" ''» -'*!; ^ 

-^-^:;r:r.tJr:i^^rtr;::!e^^;-^ 

guage IS lull ot w.ath ana n ^^„^ „„,e ,s a 

r "^rn'th to tile boim n cale. and whose memory is their con- 
tower of stuaigtu to ine aoo . j ii„„ „„ words ; 

tinual boast. In a work pubhshed >n ^^f ■""'*; '^.^i^ J t„ le 
.. Tlw. ..bolltionists have done wrong, I believe , noi is tJieir wroi j, 

:°Sl;l!;C-gi,twith gooLlesigns! They havefalleninto the com- 



13 

mon error of enthusiasts, that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if 
no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be 
compared with that of countenancing and upholding it. The tone of 
their newspapers, so far as I have seen them, has often been fierce, bitter 
and abusive. They have sent forth their orators, some of them trans- 
ported with fiery zeal, to sound the alarm against slavery through the 
land,' to gather together young and old, pupils from schools, females 
hardly arrived at the years of discretion, the ignorant, the exciteable, the 
impetuous, and to organize these into associations for the battle against 
oppression. Very unhappily they preached their doctrine to the colored 
people, and collected them into societies. To this mixed and excitable 
multitude, minute heart-rending descriptions of slavery were giving in 
piercing tones of passion ; and slaveholders were held up as monsters of 
cruelty and crime. The abolitionist, indeed, proposed to convert slave- 
holders ; and for tliis end he approached them with vituperation and ex- 
hausted on them the vocabulary of abuse. And he has reaped as he 
sowed." 

Such is the testimony of Dr. Channing, given in the year 1836. What 
would he have thought and said if he had lived until the year 1860, and 
seen this little stream, over whos;; infant violence he lamented, swelling 
into a torrent and flooding the land V Abolitionism is abusive in its per- 
sistent misrepresentation of the legal principles involved in the relation be- 
tween master and slave. They reiterate in a thousand exciting forms the 
assertion that the idea of property in man blots out his manhood and de- 
grades him to the level of a brute or a stone. " Domestic slavery," says 
Dr. Wayland, in his work on Moral Science, " supposes at best that the 
relation between master and slave is not that which exists between man 
and man, but is a modification at least of that which exists between man 
and the brutes." Do not these abolitionist philosophers know that accor- 
ding to the laws of every civilized country on earth a man has property in 
his children, and a woman has property in her husband? The statutes of 
the State of New York and of every other Northern State recognize and 
protect this property, and our courts of justice have repeatedly assessed its 
value. If a man is killed on a railroad, his wife may bring suit and re- 
cover damages for the pecuniary loss he has suifered. If one man en- 
tice away the daughter of another, and marry her while she is still under 
age, the father may bring a civil suit for damages for the loss of that 
child's services, and the pecuniary compensation is the only redress the 



14 

law provides. Thus the common law of Christendom and the statutes of 
our own State recognize property in man. In what does that property 
consist? Simply in such services as a man or child may properly be re- 
quired to render. This is all that the Levitical law, or any other law, 
means when it says, " Your bondmen shall be your possession or prop- 
erty and an inheritance for your children." The pi-operty consists not in 
the right to treat the slave like a brute, but simply in a legal claim for 
such services as a man in that position may properly be required to render. 
And yet abolitionists, in the face of the divine law, persist in denouncing 
the very relation between master and slave, "as a modification, at least, 
of that which exists between man and the brutes." This, however, is not 
the worst or most prevalent form which their abusiA^e spirit assumes. — 
Their mode of arguing the question of slaveholding, by a pretended appeal 
to facts, is a tissue of misrepresentation from beginning to end. Let me 
illustrate my meaning by a parallel case. Suppose I undertake to prove 
the wickedness of marriage as it exists in the city of New York. In this 
discussion suppose the Bible is excluded, or at least that it is not recog- 
nized as having exclusive jurisdiction in the decision of the question. — 
My first appeal is to the statute law of the State. 

I show there enactments which nullify the law of God and make divorce 
a marketable and cheap commodity. I collect the advertisements of your 
daily papers, in which lawyers offer to procure the legal separation of man 
and wife for a stipulated price, to say nothing in this sacred place of oth- 
er advertisements which decency forbids me to quote. Then I turn to the 
records of our criminal courts, and find that every day some cruel hus- 
band beats his wife, or some unnatm-al parent murders his child, or some 
discontented wife or husband seeks the dissolution of the marriage bond. 
In the next place, I turn to the orphan asylums and hospitals, and show 
there the miserable wrecks of domestic tyranny in wives deserted and chil- 
dren maimed by drunken parents. In the last place, I go through our 
streets and into our tenement houses, and count the thousands of ragged 
children, who, amid ignorance and filth, are training for the prison and 
gallows. Summing all these facts together, I put them forth as the fruits 
of marriage in the city of New York, and a proof that the relation itself 
is sinful. If I were a novelist, and had written a book to illustrate this 
same doctrine, I would call this array of facts a " Key." In this key I 
say nothing about the sweet charities and aff"ections that flourish in ten 
thousand homes, not a word about the multitude of loving kindnesses that 



15 

characterize the daily life of honest people, about the instruction and dis- 
cipline that are training children at ten thousand firesides for usefulness 
here and glory hereafter ; all this I ignore, and quote only the statute book, 
the newspapers, the records of criminal courts and the miseries of the a- 
bodes of poverty. Now, what have I done? I have not mis-stated or 
exaggerated a single fact. And yet am I not a falsifier and slanderer of 
the deepest die ? Is tliere a virtuous woman or an honest man in this city 
whose cheeks would not burn with indignation at my one-sided and injuri- 
ous statements ? Now, this is just what abolitionism has done in regard to 
slaveholding. It has undertaken to illustrate its cardinal doctrine in works 
of fiction, and then, to sustain the creation of its fancy, has attempted to 
underpin it with an accumulation of facts. These facts are collected in 
precisely the way I have described. The statute books of slaveholding 
States are searched, and every wrong enactment collated, newspaper re- 
ports of cruelty and crime on the part of wicked masters are treasured up 
and classified, all the outrages that have been perpetrated " by lewd fel- 
lows of the baser sort," of whom there are plenty, both North and South, 
are eagerly seized and recorded, and this mass of vileness and filth, from 
the kennels and sewers of society is put forth as a faithful exhibition of 
slaveholding. Senators in the forum and ministers in the pulpit, distil 
this raw material into the more refined slander ' ' that Southern society is 
essentially barbarous, and that slaveholding had its origin in hell." Legis- 
lative bodies enact and re-enact statutes which declare that slaveholding is 
such an enormous crime that if a Southern man, under the broad shield of 
the Constitution, and with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the coun- 
try in his hand, shall come within their jurisdiction, and set up a claim to 
a fugitive slave, he shall be punished with a fine of ^2,000 and fifteen 
years imprisonment. This method of argument has continued until multi- 
tudes of honest Christian people in this and other lands believe that slave- 
holding is the sin of sins, the sum of all villanies. Let me illustrate this 
by an incident in my own experience. A few years since I took from the 
centre table of a Christian family in Scotland, by whom I had been most 
kindly, entertained, a book entitled " Life and Manners in America." On 
the blank leaf was an inscription, stating that the book had been bestowed 
upon''one of the children of the family as a reward of diligence in an in- 
stitution of learning. The frontispiece was a picture of a man of fierce 
countenance beating a naked woman. The contents of the book were pro- 
fessedly compiled from the testimony of Americans upon the subject of sla- 



1« 

very. I dare not quote in this place the extracts which I made in my 
memorandum. It will be sufficient to say that the book asserts as undoubt- 
ed facts that the banks of the Mississippi ai-e studded with iron gallows for 
the punishment of slaves — that in the city of Charleston, the bloody block 
on which masters cut off the hands of disobedient servants may be seen in 
the public squares, and that sins against chastity are common and unre- 
buked in professedly Christian famiUes. 

Now in my heart I did not feel angry at the author of that book, nor 
at the school teacher who bestowed it upon his scholar, for in Christian 
charity I gave them credit for honesty in the case ; but standing there a 
stranger among the martyr memories of that glorious land to which my 
heart had so often made its pilgrimage, I did feel that you and I, and 
every man in America was wronged by the revilers of their native land, 
who teach foreigners that hanging and cutting off hands, and beating 
women, are the characteristics of our life and manners. 

But we need not go to foreign lands for proof that abolitionism has car- 
ried on its warfare by the language of abuse. The annual meeting of the 
American anti-Slavery Society brings the evidence to our 'doors. "We 
have been accustomed to laugh at these venal exhibitions of fanaticism, 
not thinking perhaps that what was fun for us was working death to our 
brethren whose property and reputation we are bound to protect. The 
fact is, we have suffered a fire to be built in our midst, whose sparks have 
been scattered far and wide ; and now, when the smoke of the conflagra- 
tion comes back to blind our eyes, and the heat of it begins to scorch our 
industrial and commercial interests, it will not do for us to say that the 
utterances of that society are the ravings of a fanatical and insignificant 
few ; for the men who compose it are honored in our midst with titles and 
offices. 

Its President is a Chief Justice of the State of New Jersey. The min- 
isters who have thrown over its doings the sanction of our holy religion, 
are quoted and magnified all over the land as the representative men of 
the age ; and the man who stood up in its deliberations, in the year 1852, 
and exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon the compromise measures, 
and the great statesmen who framed them, is now a Judge in our courts, 
and the guardian of our lives and our property. 

It will doubtless be said that the misrepresentation and abuse have not 
been confined, in the progress of this unhappy contest, to the abolitionists 
of the North ; that demagogues and self seeking men at the South have 



17 

been violent and abusive, and that newspapers professedly in tbe interests 
the South, with a spirit which can be characterized as little less than dia- 
bolical, have circulated every scandal in the most aggravated and irritating 
form. But suppose all this to be granted — what then? Can Christian 
men justify or palliate the wrath and evil speaking which are at their own 
doors, by pointing to the retaliation which it has provoked from their 
neighbors ? If I were preaching to-day to a Southern audience it would 
be my duty, and I trust God would give me grace to perform it, to tell 
them of their sins in this matter ; and especially would it be my privilege 
as a minister of the Gospel of peace — a privilege from which no false views 
of manhood should prevent me — to exhort and beseech them as brethren. 
I would assui-e them that there are multitudes here who still cherish the 
memory of the battle fields and council chambers where our fathers cement- 
ed this Union of States, and who still stand by the compact of the consti- 
tution to the utmost extremity. 

I would tell the thousands of Christian ministers, among whom are some 
of the brightest ornaments of the American pulpit, and the tens of thou- 
sands of Christian men and women, towards whom, while the love of 
Christ burns in me, my heart never can grow cold, that if they will only 
be patient and hope to the end, all wrongs may yet be righted. There- 
fore I would beseech them not to put a great gulf between us and cut oflF 
the very opportunity for reconciliation upon an honorable basis, by a revo- 
lution whose end no human eye can see. But, then, I am not preaching 
at the South. I stand here, at one of the main fountain heads of the a- 
buse we have complained of. 

I stand here to rebuke this sii>, and exhort the guilty parties to repent 
and forsake it. It is magnanimous and Christ-like for those from whom 
the first provocation came to make the first concessions. 

The legislative enactments which are in open and acknowledged viola- 
tion of the Constitution, and whose chief design is to put a stigma upon 
slaveholding, must and will be repealed. Truth and justice will ultimately 
prevail; and God's blessing and the blessings of generations yet unborn, 
will rest upon that party, in this unhappy contest, who first stand forth 
to utter the language of conciliation and proffer the olive branch of peace. 
The great fear is that the retraction will come too late ; but sooner or 
later it will come. Abolitionism ought to and one day will change the 
mode of its warfare, and adopt a new vocabulary. I believe in the lib- 
erty of the press and in freedom of speech ; but I do not believe that any 
man has a right before God, or in the eye of civilized law, to speak and 
publish what he pleases without regard to the consequences. With the 
2 



18 

conscientious convictions of our fellow-citizens, neither we nor the law 
hais any right to interfere ; but the law ought to protect all men from the 
utterance of libellous words, whose only effect is to create division and 
strife. 

I trust and pray, and call upon you to unite with me in the supplica- 
tion, that God would give abolitionists repentance and a better mind, so 
that in time to come, they may at least propagate their principles, in de- 
cent and respectful language. 

m. ABOLITIONISM LEADS IN MULTITUDES OF CASES, AKD BY A LOGICAL 

PROCESS, TO UTTER INFIDELITY. 

On this point I would not and will not be misunderstood. I do not say 
that abolitionism is infidelity. I speak only of the tendencies of the system 
as indicated in its avowed principles, and demonstrated in its practical 
fruits. 

It does not try slavery by the Bible, but, as one of its leading advo- 
cates has recently declared, it tries the Bible by the principles of freedom. 
It insists that the word of God must be made to support certain human 
opinions or forfeit all claims upon our faith. That I may not be suspec- 
ted of exaggeration on this point, let me quote fi'om the recent work of 
Mr. Barnes a passage which may well arrest the attention of all thinking 
men : 

" There are great principles in our nature, as God has made us, which 
can never be set aside by any authority of a professed revelation. If a 
book claiming to be a revelation from God, by any fair interpretation de- 
fended slavery, or placed it on the same basis as the relation of husband 
and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, such a book would not and 
could not be received by the mass of mankind as a Divine revelation.'' 

This assumption that men are capable of judging beforehand what is to 
be expected in a Divine revelation, is the cockatrice's egg from which in 
all ages heresies have been hatched. This is the spider's web which men 
have spun out of their own brains, and clinging to which they have attempted 
to swing over the yawning abyss of infidelity. Alas, how many have fall- 
en in and been dashed to pieces ! When a man sets up the great princi- 
ples of our nature (by which he always means his own preconceived opin- 
ions) as the supreme tribunal before which even the law of God must be 
tried — when a man says, "the Bible must teach abolitionism or I will not 
receive it," he has already cut loose from the sheet anchor of faith. True 
belief says, " Speak, Lord, thy servant waits to hear." Abolitionism says, 



19 

" Speak, Lord, but speak in accordance with the principles of human na- 
ture, or they cannot be received by the great mass of mankind as a Divine 
revelation." The fruit of such principles is just what we might expect. 
Wherever the seed of abolitionism has been sown broadcast, a plentiful crop 
of infidelity has sprung up. In the communities where anti-slavery ex- 
citement has been most prevalent, the power of the Grospel has invariably 
declined ; and when the tide of fanaticism begins to subside, the wrecks 
of church order and of Christian character have been scattered on the 
shore I mean no disrespect to New England — to the good men who 
there stand by the ancient landmarks and contend earnestly for the truth — 
nor to the illustrious dead whose praise is in all the churches; but who 
does not know that the Statea in which abolitionism has achieved its most 
signal triumphs are at the same time the great strongholds of infidelity in 
the land ? I have often thought that if some of those old pilgrim fathers 
could come back, in the spirit and pov. er of Elias, to attend a grand cele- 
bration at Plymouth rock, they might well preach on this text: "If ye 
were Abraham's children ye would do the works of Abraham." The effect 
of abolitionism upon individuals is no less striking and mournful than its 
influence upon communities. It is a remarkable and instructive fact, and 
one at which Christian men would do well to pause and consider, that in 
this country all the prominent leaders of abolitionism, outside of the min- 
istry, have become avowed infidels ; and that all our notorious abolition 
preachers have renounced the great doctrines of grace as they are taught 
in the standards of the reformed churches — have resorted to the most vio- 
lent processes of interpretation to avoid the obvious meaning of plain Scrip- 
tural texts, and ascribed to the apostles of Christ principles from which 
piety and moral courage instmctively revolt. They make that to be sin 
which the Bible does not declare to be sin. They denounce, in language 
such as the sternest prophets of the Law never employed, a relation which 
Jesus and his apostles recognized and regulated. They seek to mstitute 
terms and texts of Christian communion utterly at variance with the or- 
ganic law of the church as founded by its Divine Head ; and, attempting 
to justify this usurpation of Divine prerogatives, by an appeal from God's 
law to the dictates of fallen human nature, they would set up a spiritual 
tyranny more odious and insufferable, because more arbitrary and uncer- 
tain in its decisions, than Popery itself. And as the tree is so have its fruits 
been. It is not a theory, but a demonstrated fact, that abolitionism leads 
to infidelity. Such men as Garrison, and Giddings, and Gerrit Smith, 
have yielded to the current of their own principles and thrown the Bible 
overboard, Thousands of humbler men who listen to abolition preachers 



20 

will go and do likewise. And whether it be the restraints of official posi- 
tion, or the preventing grace of God, that enables such preachers to row 
up the stream and regard the authority of Scripture in other matters, their 
influence upon this one subject is all the more pernicious because they 
prophesy in the name of Christ. In this sincere and plain utterance of 
my deep convictions, I am only discharging my conscience toward the 
flock over which I am set. When the shepherd seeth the wolf coming he is 
bound to give warning. 

IV. ABOLITIONISM IS TUE CHIEF CAUSE OF THE STRIFE THAT AGITATES 

AND THE DANGER THAT THREATENS OUR COUNTRY. 

Here, as upon the preceding point, I will not be misunderstood. I am 
uot here as the advocate or opponent of any political party ; and it is no 
more than simple justice for me to say plainly, that I do uot consider Re- 
publican and abolitionist as necessarily synonymous terms. There are 
tens of thousands of Christian men who voted with the successful party 
in the late election, who do not sympathize with the principles or aims of 
abolitionism. Among these are some beloved members of my own flock, 
who will not hesitate a moment to put the seal of their approbation upon 
the doctrine of this discourse. And what is still more to the point, there 
seems to be sufficient evidence that the man who has just been chos(;n to 
be the head of this nation, is among the more conservative and Bible- 
loving men of his party. We have no fears that if the new administra- 
tion could be quietly inaugurated, it would or could abolitionize the gov- 
ernment. There are honest people enough in the Northern States to pre- 
vent such a result. But, then, while this is admitted as a simple matter 
of truth and justice, it cannot be denied, on the other hand, that aboli- 
tionism did enter, with all its characteristic bitterness, into the recent con- 
test ; that the result never could have been accomplished without its as- 
sistance, and that it now appropriates the victory in words of ridicule and 
scorn that sting like a serpent. Let me give you, as a single specimen of 
the spirit in which abolitionism has carried on its political warfare, an ex- 
tract from a journal which claims to have a larger circulation than any 
other religious paper in the land. I quote from the New York Indepen- 
dent, of September, 1856 : 

" The people will not levy war nor inaugurate a revolution, even to re- 
lieve Kansas, until they have first tried what they can do by voting. If 
this peaceful remedy should fail to be applied this year, then the people 
will count the cost wisely, and decide for themselves boldly and firmly 



21 

which is the better way to rise in arms and throw ofiF a government worse 
than that of old King George, or endure it another four years and then 
vote again." 

Such is the spirit — such the love to the Constitution and Union of the 
these States with which this religious element has entered into and seeks 
to control our party politics. 

But we deceive ourselves if we suppose that our present dangers are of 
a birth so recent as 1856. As the questions now before the country rise 
in their magnitude above all party interests and ought at once to blot out 
all party lines, so their origin is found far back of all party organizations 
as they now exist. 

An article published twenty yeai-s ago in the Princeton Revitw, contains 
this remarkable language : 

"The opinion that slaveholding is itself a crime must operate to produce 
the disunion of the States and the division of all ecclesiastical societies in 
this country. Just so far !<s this opiniun operates it will lead those who 
entertain it to submit to any sacrifices to carry it out and give it effect. 
We shall become two uatious in feeling, which must soon render us two 
nations in fact." 

These words are wonderfully prophetic, and they who read the signs of 
the times must see that the period of their fulfilment draws near. In regard 
to ecclesiastical societies the division foretold is ah-eady in a great measure 
accomplished. Three of oui- great religious denominations have been rent 
in twain by the simple question, " Is slaveholding a sin?" 

It yet remains to be seen whether the American Tract Society and the 
American Board of Foreign Missions, will be revolutionized and dismem- 
bered by a contest which, we are told, is to be annually renewed. In re- 
gard to the Union of these States there is too much reason to fear that " we 
are already two nations in feeling," and to anticipate the near approach of 
the calamity which shall blot out some of the stars in our ensign and make 
us two nations in fact. 

And, what has brought us to the verge of this precipice ? What evil 
spirit has put enmity between the seed of those whom God by his bless- 
ing on the wisdom and sacrifices of our fathers made one flesh ? What 
has created and fostered this alienation between the North and South un- 
til disunion — that used to be whispered in corners — stalks forth in open 
daylight and is recognized as a necessity by multitudes of thinking men 
in all sections of the land ? I believe before God, that this division of 
feeling, of which actual disunion will be but the expression and embodi- 
ment, was begotten of abolitionism, has been rocked in its cradle and fed 



22 

with its poisoned milk, and instructed by its ministers until girded with a 
strength which comes not altogether of this upper world, it is taking hold 
upon the pillars of the constitution and shattering the noble fabric to its 
base. 

There was a time when the constitutional questions between the North 
and South — the conflict of material interests growing out of their dif- 
erences in soil and production, were discussed in the spirit of stateman- 
ship and Christian courtesy. Then such men as Daniel Webster on the 
one side, and Calhoun on the other, stood up face to face and defended the 
rights of their respective constituency in words which will be quoted as long 
as the English tongue shall endure, as a model of eloquence and a pattern of 
manly debate. But abolitionism began to creep in. It came first as a 
purely moral question ; but very soon its doctrines were embraced by a 
suiScient number to hold the balance of power between contending par- 
ties in many districts and States. Aspirants for the Presidency seized up- 
on it as a weapon for gratifying their ambition or avenging their dis- 
appointments. Under the shadow of their patronage, sincere abolitionists 
became more bold and abusive in advocating their principles. The un- 
lawful and wicked business of enticing slaves from their masters was push- 
ed forward with increasing zeal. Men who in the hotter days of the re- 
public could not have obtained the smallest oifice, were elected to Congress 
upon this single issue ; and ministers of the Gospel descended from the 
pulpit to mingle religious animosity with the boiling caiddron of political 
strife. Nor was this process confined to one side in the contest. Abuse 
always provokes recrimination. So long as human nature is passionate, 
hard words will be responded to by harder blows. And now behold the 
result 1 lu the halls where Webster and Calhoun, Adams and McDuffie 
rendered the very name of American statesmanship illustrious and revived 
the memory of classic eloquence, we have heard the outpouring of both 
Northern and Southern violence from men who must be nameless in this 
sacred place ; and in the land where such slaveholders as Washington and 
Madison united with Hamilton and Hancock in cementing the Union 
which they fondly hoped would be perpetual, commerce and manufactures, 
and all our great industrial and governmental interests, are trembling on 
the verge of dissolution ; and as abolitionism is the great mischief maker 
between North and South, so it is the great stumbling block in the way 
of a peaceful settlement of our difficulties. Its voice is still for war. The 
spirit of conciliation and compromise it utterly abhors, and, mingling a 
horrid mirth with its madness, puts into the hands of the advocates of se- 
pession the very fans with which to blow the embers of strife into a flame 



23 

One man threw a torch into the great temple of the Ephesians, and kin- 
dled a conflagration which a hundred thousand brave men could not ex- 
tinguish. One man fiddled and sang, and made his courtiers laugh, amid 
the burning of Rome — and the abolition preacher ' ' feels good " and 
overflows with merriment, when he sees our merchants and laboring men 
running after their chests and the bread of their families " as if all crea- 
tion was after them," and snuffs on the Southern breeze the scent of ser- 
vile and civil war. 

Oh, shame — shame that it should come to this ; and the name of our 
holy religion be so blasphemed ! Let us hope in Christian charity that 
such men do not comprehend the danger that stares them in the face. 
Indeed, who of us does fuUy comprehend it? In the eloquent words 
of Daniel Webster, "While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, grati- 
fying prospects spread out before us, for us and for our children. Beyond 
that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, 
that curtain may not rise." A kind and wonderful Providence has so 
tempered the body of these States together, so bound and interlaced them 
with commercial and social ties, to say nothing of legal obligations, that 
no member can be severed, and especially no contest can be waged among 
the members, wiiliout a quivering and anguish in every nerve, and a 
stagnation in the vital currents of all. Let one star be blotted out from 
our ensign, and the moral gravitation which holds all in their orbits wUl 
be paralyzed, if not utterly desti'oyed. The living example of successful 
secession for one cause, will suggest the same course for another ; and 
unless God gives our public men a wisdom and forbearance of which the 
past few years have aiforded too little evidence, the dissolution of this 
Union will be the signal for the disintegration of its elements. In such a 
chaos let us not flatter ourselves that we shall be in entire peace and 
safety. The contest on whose perilous edge we seem to stand cannot be 
merely a sectional one — all the North on the one side, and aU the South 
on the other. It is a conflict that will run the ploughshare of division 
through every State and neighborhood in the land . Abolition orators 
may talk about what "we of the North" will do and will not do, as though 
all the people had bowed down to worship the image they had set up ; 
but other men besides them will claim the right to speak — other interests 
will need to be conserved besides the cause upon which they arrogantly 
assume that victory perches and the smile of heaven rests. " Let not him 
who putteth on his ai-mor boast as he that pulleth it ofl"." When the 
thousands of workingmen whose subsistence depends upon our trade with 
the South, many of whom have been deluded by abolition demagogues, 



24 



W wWch political -°--y ^^' "" ;;'™',,,"le.t and industrial 

*'^.rnr:i:s:ttarof ^ -,-, it .a, .. 
,rr.-nt: Hon. to^s ^j^j^ -^1 Cr™: 

^Katever pe— , ^^^IZ^lZl^^y^ peacM? Where is 
.peak so eame tly . But who k ^^^^ ^^.^ ^^^ ^^^.^.^ 

the surgeon "''° ^"/f "^y™" ;, ,^, ,t,tesman or political economist who 
are sheddmg of blood? ^^"^^J - ^^^^ ^^^ industrialinterests of 

"'" ""1::'^ rjdt c on uri-l Ilarnr of dissolution? Let us not 
r °" oursdVcT TKe chasm before us is a yawning abyss, mtowho^, 
CCnryt:;God.scanpenetrate Other—^^^^^^^^^^ 

J, .histle to keep ^ '^ ^^^^^^T:^ the horror of a 
the curtain that is about to use. ^^ ^^^^^^ 

,.eat darkness settles ^^ J^^ ^f '/l \' uds are 'the hearts of 
„p. I^et - ^W;,"^^- *:^" i2,r;f„.e his loving spirit into our na- 
all men, to dispel the ftartul v,. , ^^ekness of wisdom, and to 

tional councils, to g,ve our public -"^"f JJ^^^^ „( t,,,tterly kindness. 

,,,d the hearts of all *» Pe^";;;™-':: ered, let us prove our 
Bnt if we would have tnese bupp _ 

,,,,,cur works.. kctl,eb.m^^^^^^^^^^ 

fold precept of the text . i hcse iQi ^ ^^ 

teach otherwise, fron. such withdraw thyself. 



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